Contents

Background

Work on building the Kursk began in 1990 at Severodvinsk, near Arkhangelsk. Launched
in 1994, it was commissioned in December of that year. It was the
penultimate of the large Oscar-II class submarines to be designed
and approved in the Soviet era. At 154m long and four stories high
it was the largest attack submarine ever built. The outer hull,
made of high-nickel, high-chrome content stainless steel
8.5 mm thick, had exceptionally good resistance to corrosion
and a weak magnetic signature which helped prevent
detection by Magnetic Anomaly Detection
(MAD) systems. There was a two-metre gap to the 50.8 mm thick
steel inner hull.

The Kursk was part of Russia's Northern Fleet, which
had suffered funding cutbacks throughout the 1990s. Many of its
submarines were anchored and rusting in Andreyeva Bay, 100 km from Murmansk.[1] Little
work to maintain all but the most essential front-line equipment,
including search and rescue equipment, had occurred. Northern Fleet
sailors had gone unpaid in the mid-1990s. The end of the decade saw
something of a renaissance for the fleet; in 1999, the
Kursk carried out a successful reconnaissance mission in
the Mediterranean, tracking the US Navy's Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War. August 2000's
training exercise was to have been the largest summer drill — nine
years after the Soviet Union's collapse — involving four attack
submarines, the fleet's flagship Pyotr
Velikiy ("Peter the Great") and a flotilla of smaller
ships.

Explosion

The Kursk sailed out to sea to perform an exercise of
firing dummy torpedoes at the Pyotr
Velikiy, a Kirov class
battlecruiser. On August 12, 2000 at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an
explosion while preparing to fire the torpedoes. The only credible
report to date is that this was due to the failure and explosion of
one of the Kursk's hydrogen peroxide-fueled supercavitating
torpedoes. It is believed that HTP, a form of highly
concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant
for the torpedo, seeped through rust in the torpedo casing. A similar incident was
responsible for the loss of HMS Sidon in 1955.

The chemical explosion detonated with the force of 100-250 kg
of TNT and
registered 2.2 on the Richter scale. The submarine
sank in relatively shallow water at a depth of 108 metres
(350 ft), about 135 km (85 miles) from Severomorsk, at
69°40′N37°35′E﻿ / ﻿69.667°N
37.583°E﻿ / 69.667; 37.583. A
second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event measured
between 3.5 and 4.4 on the Richter scale, equivalent to 3-7 tons of
TNT.[2] One of
those explosions blew large pieces of debris back through the
submarine.

The length of the Kursk exceeded the depth at which it
sank by 46 metres (150 ft).

Rescue
attempts

Though rescue attempts were offered by the British and Norwegian teams, all
sailors and officers aboard the Kursk perished. Russia
declined initial rescue offers. The Russian admiralty at first
suggested most of the crew died within minutes of the explosion;
however, motivations for making the claim are considered by outside
observers as political.

Captain Lieutenant Dmitriy Kolesnikov, one of
the survivors of the first explosion, survived in Compartment 9 at
the very stern of the boat after blasts destroyed the front of the
submarine. Recovery workers found notes on his body. They showed
that 23 sailors (out of 118 aboard) had waited in the dark with
him.

There has been much debate over how long the sailors might have
survived. Some, particularly on the Russian side, say that they
would have died very quickly; water is known to leak into a
stationary Oscar-II craft through the propeller shafts and at 100 m
depth it would have been impossible to plug. Others point out that
many potassium superoxide chemical
cartridges, used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release
oxygen to enable survival, were found used when the craft was
recovered, suggesting some of the crew survived for several
days.

Ironically, these cartridges appear to have been the cause of
death; a sailor appears to have accidentally brought a cartridge in
contact with the sea water, causing a chemical reaction and a flash
fire. The official investigation into the disaster showed some men
appeared to have survived the fire by plunging under the water.
(Fire marks on the walls indicate the water was at waist level in
the lower area at this time). However, the fire rapidly used up the
remaining oxygen in the air, causing death by asphyxiation.[3]

While the tragedy of the Kursk played out in the Far
North, Russia's then President Vladimir Putin, though immediately
informed of the tragedy, waited for five days before he broke a
holiday at a presidential resort house in subtropical Sochi on the Black Sea before
commenting publicly on the loss of the pride of the Northern Fleet.
A year later he said: "I probably should have returned to Moscow,
but nothing would have changed. I had the same level of
communication both in Sochi and in Moscow, but from a PR point of
view I could have demonstrated some special eagerness to
return."[4]

Raising

Submarine wreck after the disaster

A consortium formed by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International using the barge
Giant 4 eventually raised the Kursk and recovered
the dead[5],
who were buried in Russia – although three of the bodies were too
badly burned to be identified. The heat generated by the first
blast detonated the warheads on 5 to 7 torpedoes[6] causing
a series of blasts big enough to be measured on geological seismic sensors in the area –
and those secondary explosions fatally damaged the vessel.

Russian officials strenuously denied claims that the sub's
Granitcruise
missiles[7] were
carrying nuclear warheads, and no evidence has been provided to the
contrary. When the salvage operation raised the boat in 2001, there
were considerable fears that preparing to move the wreck could
trigger explosions, because the bow was cut off in the process,
using a tungsten carbide-studded cable. This
tool had the potential to cause sparks which would ignite remaining
pockets of volatile gases, such as hydrogen. The successfully
recovered portion of the Kursk was towed to Severomorsk
and placed in a floating dry dock where extensive forensic work was
accomplished.

The remains of the Kursk's reactor compartment were
towed to Sayda Bay on Russia's northern Kola Peninsula – where more than 50
reactor compartments were afloat at pier points – after a shipyard
had defuelled the boat in early 2003.[8] The
rest of the boat was then dismantled.